Russia Claims Birth Rate Up 30 Percent Since 2007

Russia’s Minister of Labor Social Protection Maxim Topilin told the Moscow Times on Wednesday that the country’s birth rate has increased 30 percent since 2007. Topilin said in an interview that the increase was due to “maternity capital” on January 1, 2007.

According to MT, the Russian government, in an effort to urge families to have more than one child, made all women who gave birth to a second child after January 1, 2007 eligible for a government-issued benefit of almost 409,000 rubles (about $12,600). However, the benefit is not paid in cash but the parents, reports MT, are allowed to spend the money towards improving their housing conditions, pay for their children’s education or put the money towards a pension.

The U.S. birthrate is currently at a historic low. According to the MedPage.com, Americans had fewer babies in 2011 than in any year prior.:

Americans had fewer babies in 2011 than in any year before, according to an annual summary of vital statistics.
In 2011, 3,953,593 babies were born in the U.S. — 1% fewer than in 2010 and 4% fewer than in 2009, according to Brady Hamilton, PhD, of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues at the agency and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

That number, combined with population data, yielded a crude birth rate of 12.7 per 1,000 people, the lowest rate ever reported for the nation, they reported online and in the March 2013 issue of Pediatrics.